An Insatiable Passion

Jake quirked a black brow. ‘Do you blame him for his attitude? You ran away and you disappeared into thin air. Almost two years later you popped up in print at a movie premi;agere with Maxwell…’

And it felt good, so good, she affixed inwardly. Diamonds at my throat and a designer gown, the stuff of which dreams are made. ‘I imagine that set the natives back on their heels,’ she mocked.

‘Oh, yes, you were the sole topic of conversation locally for months,’ he agreed tongue in cheek. ‘Talk about rags to riches.’

She gave a little smile. ‘I try not to. Other people find the Cinderella story terribly boring.’

‘Are you casting Maxwell as the fairy godmother or the dashing young prince? Either way he made a pretty sordid match for a nineteen-year-old girl,’ he drawled with a derisive softness that stung. ‘And I still wouldn’t have thought that you had the money to buy this farm at that early stage of your…career.’

Ignoring that insolent hesitation, she shrugged. ‘I didn’t. Grant bought it for me.’ And it would knock you for six if you knew what else his representative bought at the same time, she thought with malicious amusement.

‘How very generous of him.’

‘He’s extremely generous.’ If anything irritated, inconvenienced or demanded, slap a cheque down hard on it. That was how Grant functioned. Unfortunately it usually worked for him. Back then it had worked with Kitty. She had confused generosity with caring. A bad mistake.

Jake’s dark, unfathomable gaze rested on her, ‘You treat me like an enemy.’

‘Do I?’ She produced a laugh worthy of applause. ‘We’re strangers now, Jake.’

He probed the bright smile that sparkled on her lips. ‘I never meant to hurt you, Kitty.’

‘Hurt me?’ she prompted, tilting her head back enquiringly.

He swore in sudden exasperation. ‘For God’s sake, will you drop the Heaven Rothman act? Or has that nymphomaniac superbitch you’ve been playing for so long somehow become you?’ he demanded crushingly. ‘There are no microphones or cameras about. Do you think Kitty could come out of the closet for five minutes?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘I ONLY perform for my friends, and you’re not numbered among them.’ Stormily Kitty flung her head back, a line of pink demarcating the exotic slant of her cheekbones. Bitter resentment shuddered through her, fighting to the surface in spite of her efforts to contain it. ‘Since you came into this house your hypocrisy has amazed me! For a start, you didn’t like my grandparents. And at least you had the guts to be honest about that eight years ago. You thought Nat had a chip the size of a boulder on his shoulder. You thought Martha was a sour, cold woman. And you were right…you were right on both counts!’

Jake stood there, effortlessly dominating the cramped confines of the room. Dark and controlled, he murmured, ‘Martha mellowed a good deal after his death.’

‘Not towards me, she didn’t!’

‘You’re upset,’ he drawled flatly. ‘I’ll leave. I shouldn’t have stayed.’

Her hand sent the door crashing shut. ‘No, you won’t leave until I’ve had my say,’ she declared shakily. ‘Why have you decided to rewrite the past? I had the most miserable childhood here and you know it. Once in seventeen years my grandmother put her arms around me. She must have had to hold me to feed me when I was a baby, but I don’t remember it. I remember being a burden, a nuisance and an embarrassment. My grandfather didn’t get the chance to punish my mother, so he punished me instead…’

Her voice broke and she turned to the window, bracing her trembling hands on the dusty sill. ‘I remember it all,’ she muttered, forcing out the harshened syllables very low, ‘as if it were yesterday.’

The profound silence stretched on and on.

‘Why did you come up here?’

Numbly she fought to recapture her poise. ‘I just wanted…to see it.’

‘Well, now you’ve seen it…’

‘Do you have children?’ As soon as the question left her lips, she could have bitten her tongue out. That dangerous explosion of emotion had left her temporarily out of control.

‘A little girl.’ He hesitated. ‘She’s four years old.’

A sudden ache stirred in Kitty’s breasts, violent, unforgiving. But his admission iced back over her seething emotions. Her voice emerged quietly and cleanly. ‘If you don’t mind, I would like to be on my own now.’

‘No problem. I’ve got a lunch date to keep,’ he said curtly.

Her arrogant assumption that he had intended to invite her gave her a sharp pang. Of course she wouldn’t have gone. You didn’t dive when you were bleeding into a river full of crocodiles. All the same, it would have been nice to have been asked so that she could have refused. ‘Who is she?’ she asked lightly.

At the door he paused, his dark scrutiny hooded. ‘You wouldn’t know her. She wasn’t here in your time.’

‘My goodness, but you’re being coy, Jake,’ she purred, and she was Heaven Rothman to her fingertips, poised, indulgently amused.

Long, supple fingers flexed against the door-frame. ‘Her name’s Paula. She’s the nurse in the local practice.’

She smiled. ‘What does she look like?’

A suffocating tension alive with hostile undertones had thickened the atmosphere. A muscle jerked at the corner of his wide, sensual mouth. ‘Are you going to ask if I’ve slept with her as well?’ he slung at her caustically.

He shocked her into silence. Her startled gaze fled his aggressive stare. She looked away from him. In the interim, he walked out of the house, slammed into his car and drove off. She breathed again. Pain was still stabbing through her and she didn’t understand why. Two hours ago she had believed that Jake was married. Now she knew he was unmarried and involved. What was the difference? She couldn’t possibly be jealous. The very idea was laughable after all these years.

With a sigh she slumped down into an armchair. Hunger was making her dizzy. Common sense told her that she was in no fit state to drive. She would bring in the groceries and make herself a sensible snack before she left to find a hotel as far from here as she could get by evening.

He hadn’t said goodbye. But then they’d never said goodbye to each other. Ever. It seemed that habit remained. And without conscious volition Kitty was swept back to the aftermath of that night she had spent in his arms.

She had felt guilty, but she hadn’t felt ashamed… then. Innocently trusting in that confession he had made, she had believed there was no cause for shame where there was love.

It had taken him twenty-four hours to seek her out—a Jake who was a complete stranger to her. A bitter despair and a distaste that had pierced her to the very centre of her being had shown nakedly in his shadowed eyes before he had looked away.

‘What happened between us was very wrong. I wish to God I could wipe it out, but I can’t.’ His intonation had been low and precise, as if he had rehearsed the entire speech beforehand. ‘Your grandparents trusted me and I’ve broken that trust. I’ve got no excuse. I’m five years older and wiser and I should never have touched you.’

‘If you love me, it—’

‘But that’s just the point. I don’t love you in the way a man loves a woman. I care for you deeply as a friend…as a kid sister, if you like,’ he had forced out in harsh interruption.

‘I love you,’ she had whispered, not even able to absorb what he was telling her. It hadn’t seemed real. Nightmares had that quality.

‘It’s an infatuation and it will die,’ he had overruled fiercely. ‘Last night was a mistake, Kitty. I was drunk. That doesn’t excuse me, but that’s the only reason it happened. It wasn’t your fault, it was mine.’ He had stopped to clear his throat. ‘If there should be consequences…’

‘Consequences?’ she had repeated blankly.

‘If you prove to be pregnant,’ he had grated hoarsely, ‘I’ll stand by you, I’ll deal with your grandparents. But I won’t marry you. A marriage between us wouldn’t work. The risk of pregnancy isn’t that great, but if it should happen I promise you that I’ll look after everything. However, the pregnancy will have to be terminated,’ he had concluded harshly.

Three weeks later he had come to her with haunted eyes and gaunt cheekbones. ‘Thank God,’ he had muttered rawly, let off the hook.

He had married Liz quietly in London, the ceremony unattended by any of his family.

They said hearts didn’t break. Kitty’s had. The news of his marriage had shocked everybody, but it had devastated her. It was one thing to humbly accept that he didn’t love her, another thing entirely to accept that he could love and marry someone else. She had lost so much more than a lover. He had been closer to her than her own family. He had been her only real friend. And he had dropped her like a hot potato, retreating with appalled speed from the trap he had seen opening up in front of him. For him that night really had been a disastrous mistake.

He could have let her down more gently. She was convinced Liz hadn’t been in the background then. His own family had known nothing whatsoever about her. But what embittered Kitty most of all was his refusal to admit that he had ever wanted her. A man didn’t make love to a female firmly fixed in his mind as an extra sister. Then, had he employed any other excuse, she might still have harboured hopes. And Jake had been determined to kill even her hopes stone-dead.